A Past for Noah
by Cheated Of Between
Summary: My first fic, be nice. A look at Noah's life, before, after, and hopefully during TDI. Tried to keep it in character, and canon. Sorry if it's not.
1. Of Kindergarten

Noah had a very simple life planned out for himself. Mostly it involved getting rich through his intelligence (computer programs, writing books, business: it didn't matter which he chose, talented in each) and then coasting through early retirement until he dies and can be cryogenically frozen.

Simple. Elegant, one might say, in its 'American Dream' quality (particularly odd, as he lived in Canada). No intolerably sweet relationships or a soul-searching 'what is my purpose' trip to be seen, as the teenager was no fan of romance. No matter what anyone might tell him, the cynic will always believe (as much as he's ever believed in anything) money could, and _has_, bought happiness.

But then, he'd never been what most people would call happy, other than in the childish before-he-could-speak way. Content, bored, angry: Three words summed up nearly the whole of the 'emotional' aspect of his life. The youngest of nine siblings, by the time he came along his parents had been through all the stages.

New parents, stressed parents of several small children, even the "I'll do better with this one" kind of parenting had worn away. By now they just wanted to _stop_ being parents. He'd found their calendar, counting down until the day he graduated. It disgusted him, a little more than he already was. They were acting like prisoners counting down to their release date. And Noah was their ball and chain, so to speak. As the youngest, born four years after Rebekah, second-to-last, that's all he was.

Their first one had been smart too, Nathanial, and now he was a twenty eight year old OB/GYN with a good catholic fiancé. Their fifth, Theresa, was twenty-four and on her last year of collage to become an electrician. All their children, in fact, had been fairly bright, though it was still a matter of whether or not they applied themselves. With Noah, they didn't notice, but he could read something once and remember it forever, look at algebra or computer code and read it like English. Book smarts came so easily to him; it made him so fucking angry that his parents wouldn't let him skip grades. They didn't understand that. As much as they wanted him out of the house, their staunch belief that integral steps of education should not be 'skipped' held strong.

They'd had their smart mouths before him, the back-talkers, the rebels. Christine (second, twenty-seven with her twin Gabriel, third) dressed all in black from age twelve to twenty-one, at which point she began wearing _some_ other colors. Samuel, twenty-three (sixth) and a budding/blooming artist, had often gotten into shouting matches, with screaming, slamming doors, and deathly silence. Noah had a smart mouth, used the driest of humor, and a bored tone with many layers of sarcasm. He twisted truth almost gently when he needed to, then presented as it was, no pretty trimmings, so it did not occur to anyone he might be lying. While Tina used a seething anger to put so much power in her words (which were fairly eloquent by themselves, as she had been a bookworm, _the_ bookworm of their familybefore turning to the dark side) that while the phrasing snuck it in, her emotion did the damage. Samuel shouted lies so outrageous that it had to be screamed back how wrong he was, obscenities littered his sentences and he fought for every scrap of ground. Five more minutes before curfew, I don't care if you don't like my friends, I want a lock on my door, I'm not drunk!

In comparison, their youngest paled and faded.

When teachers told them how intelligent Noah was, they nodded and smiled. If they mentioned his bad attitude or borderline-antisocial behavior, they changed their actions appropriately, frowning and promising to speak with him about it. But since there were still four or five other kids in the house while he was going through grade school (and by middle school the teachers stop worrying), it never got done.

Because Myra, lucky number seven, had a secret boyfriend at fourteen (now twenty-two and five months pregnant, she was saving up for a house with her new husband) and she was _forbidden_ from seeing him. Or Rebekah, twenty one and the eighth, had won first place in some track-and-field event. Sometimes it was even just a routine fight with Samuel (never just _Sam_ or I'll grind that big mouth of yours into the cement, squirt) that got his parents off track.

When the principal himself talked to them about the possibility of their son skipping kindergarten, they hemmed and hawed and drew out their sentences over-long. The father (the near-silent kind, an Indian from the States) added extra comments to his wife's (as small French-Canadian woman who still spoke the language sometimes and had the accent to prove it) small speech. The principal, knowing them for years now mostly because of their fourth child, Ruth, and her schoolyard fights, waited patiently, knowing that the rather religious half of the couple would reach her point eventually. She finally admitted that Noah was still shy, so they weren't comfortable moving him ahead, because he might be bullied or fall behind. Noah was young for his grade anyways, and the only reason he was in school this year was because he had begged and thrown temper tantrums in turn, arguing with them all summer.

Noah was _not_ shy.

He'd begged his older siblings to teach him things ever since he learned how to talk. He bugged them about what they were learning in school, though Samuel was the only one to even halfway understand _why_. Sometimes the eleven-year-old would do nothing for hours but sit with his only little brother and explain about multiplication (though he knew some of the times tables, he didn't understand how they worked until Gabriel, who didn't mind if he called him Gabe, showed him a rectangle with a side two long, another five long, and ten all told). Ruth was the one to roll her eyes and show him how to use a basic calculator, and how 58008 looked like the word BOOBS if you flipped it upside down. She then didn't feel like telling him what it meant. Theresa showed him her biology homework, teaching him about cells and bone structures, half of which he forgot, but the other half he still remembered when he took biology, years later.

Noah wore his parents down because Gabriel had already taught him all the letters, he could count to a thousand (for hours, he did nothing but follow his mother around and count, because she didn't believe he could and he was _that determined_ to go to school), and 'read' (for some words it was a matter of having read a book so many times that every word was hard-wired into his brain, but the ones like 'and' 'the' or 'trap' he could honestly read) every picture book in the house very loudly at night, making sure his parents in the bedroom next door could hear him.

His siblings didn't complain because they had made one of their last all-nine-of-them pacts when they promised to get him into kindergarten that year. They helped him badger, telling him that Dad, stiff-upper-lip as he was, had a big soft spot when it came to tears, even crocodile. Sometimes they'd show him off to their friends, tell him to recite timetables, or name all the bones in his arm. Their friends (aware of the pact) would then comment on how _easy_ kindergarten would be for him to their parents.

Needless to say, they caved.

The first day of kindergarten, Noah came home elated. He hadn't learned anything new that day, his teacher had just been asking questions about how much they knew, going around in alphabetical order while the others played and drew. Never before had he cursed his last name, but now he wished he could actually skewer it.

She'd been amazed when the excited Noah started counting and didn't stop until she cut him off at sixty-one. He knew, when she asked him, that thirty-one came after thirty, so it defiantly wasn't memorization. He understood fairly well how the counting system worked. He wrote all his abc's in his favorite color, green, crayons; uppercase, lowercase, and a few words you see with early readers/writers. The dark-skinned brunette talked clearly, with rather adult-sounding sentences, and started on naming all the bones he could remember. Some of them were wrong (tibula instead of tibia, to rhyme with fibula, was one she could pick out); but he was in kindergarten, _young_ for it too.

The minute all her new students (and the parents picking them up, though it was a small crowd of siblings who swung around to celebrate their long-awaited goal with Noah) had left, she nearly ran to the principal's office, to tell him about a little four-year-old who very well might be a genius. When she finally had the presence of mind to mention his name, Noah Wilson, the principal stopped her right there.

"The Wilson's have _another_ son?" He rubbed at his temples. "Another smart one?" Remembering very well the kind of hell-raising the others had done, he sighed. Was there a way to put this without sounding biased? "Sarah, there is one thing you must understand if you're going to teach a Wilson. There's apparently nine of them now, and they're generally attention-seeking. It comes with being a part of large family, though there's nothing really wrong with that. Charlie's a hard worker, and it's amazing Rose gives them as much attention as she does, but there's only so much they can do-"

"Sir," Since she was interupting the man who controlled much of her work environment, might as well politly interupt. "I'm not sure what this has to do with _Noah_."

"Ah," The middle-aged man grimaced. He'd only managed to babble on in his attempt to be tactful. "I'm beginning to talk like them. To get to the point, any kid in a big family--such as Noah—demands more attention than others. That he is exceptionally bright adds to the matter _exponentionally_."

"I'm not sure if I_ should_ be teaching him. A kid that smart doesn't belong in kindergarten; it'll drive him insane to work at the pace his peers have to work at." Sarah thought back to the bright-eyed little boy who knew more then any other little kid she'd ever talked to (and it was her occupation to talk to little kids).

The over-worked, under-paid educator groaned, but he promised to talk to him about it.

This, as we know, got the issue nowhere.

x~o~x

Sorry, jumped the gun, had to edit. Took away most of the genius stuff, tried to make it a little more believable. Hope I suceeded. _Tell_ me if I'm wrong, like Canada doesn't call it kindergarten or something. You have no clue how welcome reviews are.


	2. Elementary

To sum up his elementary school years, he spent them reading, with half an ear on what Ms. or Mr. Whoever was teaching. If it was something he didn't know, which wasn't very often, he'd put down his book. If he did, he merely shut off his hearing and focused on what he was reading, whether it be a textbook he stole from one of his siblings (he had learned how to pick a lock quick enough for it to look like he wasn't, and broke into their lockers. This endeared him to them in no way, but he only got punched _once_ by Ruth when he mixed up her schedule and took a book she needed, so at least _she_ didn't mind too much) or something from the library. Students looked at him like he was just the bookworm of their grade, shorter than the rest of them, nerdier than the rest of them and smarter.

But he was more than that.

He was ten, he got his first laptop. Nathan (who was in fact the 'snootiest' of the entire family, beyond even Noah) had saved up enough for a new one as he was a three years into collage and the thing just wasn't as fast as he needed it to be. It took an average of six minutes to load an Internet page and was more beat-up than Samuel's well-loved art supplies, but it was _his_. And so Noah tumbled into the wondrous world of online gaming. His web-peers gave him advice. How to de-frag a hard drive to make your computer faster, take advantage of a glitch in a game, even told him everything he would ever need to know about spam. But one guy will forever be his idol, his mentor.

She simply called herself his Yoda.

Cretin-Queen taught him how to hack into _anything._ She showed him code so intricate it made Noah's eyes light up and fingers ache. There came a time, that after months of student-to-teacher interaction, she saw fit to give him her name and age. At which point something needed to be cleared up. She was a brilliant hacker, and found out early on that the computer he used belonged to Nathanial Wilson, age twenty-two.

Cretin-Queen: Hi, my name is Allison Macky, I am twenty-eight.

Ninth Chapter: Noah Wilson, ten years old.

Noah waited nearly three minutes, the longest of his life so far.

Ninth Chapter: Hello? CQ, you there?

Another minute.

Cretin-Queen: I'm sorry, I've just been lmao at my own stupidity.

Ninth Chapter: ?

Cretin-Queen: I've been thinking all this time that you were Nathanial and twenty-two. Anybody ever tell you you're smart for your age?

Ninth Chapter: Some use the word genius.

Cretin-Queen: Modest as always my young student. So why's your computer say it's Nate's?

Ninth Chapter: Nathan's my oldest brother, and like I've said before, this computer is fucking slow. He gave it to me when he got a new one.

Cretin-Queen: Sorry, you're ten, not allowed to swear anymore.

Ninth Chapter: Sigh…

Cretin-Queen: I've always wondered what was up with your screen name.

Ninth Chapter: Yeah, I'm the youngest of nine kids, but the time it took you to 'lmao' you were doing a little check, didn't you?

Cretin-Queen: Guilty as charged. What's it like with a ginormus family?

Ninth Chapter: You're the youngest Wilson kid. People expect you to be overly pretentious like Nathan, or gothic like Tina, or kind like Gabe, get into fights like Ruth, or be studious like Theresa, or be an artsy-delinquent like Samuel, or some kind of charisma-charged cool guy like Myra, or sports-loving like Bekah. They don't expect that I have my own identity, that I can do something one of my siblings hasn't already done.

Cretin-Queen: Whoa, slow down dude. Are you sure you haven't hit you teen years there?

Ninth Chapter: I'm less than five foot and my face hasn't started sprouting hair yet.

Cretin-Queen: Both pretty indicative signs of either a girl midget or a pre-pubescent boy.

Ninth Chapter: Checking… Checking… I am neither a female nor a midget, thank-you-very-muchly.

Cretin-Queen: Alright then, I was getting worried about you.

Ninth Chapter: Hardy-har-har.

Cretin-Queen: So, almighty genius-boy-wonder, what grade are you in?

Ninth Chapter: Going into sixth pretty soon. And before you ask, it's because my freaking idiotic parents don't want me to skip grades. I ace all my subjects, heck, I know more than some of the teachers.

Cretin-Queen: Nice job on the not-swearing there. I give you an A+.

Ninth Chapter: I'm frowning at you. I had to go back over that to change the swearwords.

Cretin-Queen: B+

Ninth Chapter: Glaring.

Ninth Chapter: Shit, I've gtg, my mom's calling me down to dinner.

Ninth Chapter has signed off.

Cretin-Queen: Tut tut tut, C-.

Cretin-Queen has signed off.

CQ was fun, the most knowledgeable of anybody he'd met online or off, and willing to teach him anything he wanted to know. It came upon one day when she announced that her little Jedai had surpassed her and that she was very proud of her only student.

Cretin-Queen: Just don't pull a Darth on me, okay?

Ninth Chapter: I solemnly swear I am up to no good.

Cretin-Queen: Serious time. This is important.

Ninth Chapter: I promise I won't use my hacker skills on banks to steal money from people, or something like that. Only to get information.

Cretin-Queen: Close enough. Alright hacker Formally Known As Ninth Chapter. I bequeath to you my crown, and christen you the Ninth King! It'll get you into a lot of circles if you even know my screen-name, but remember this if you ever get in deep with anything (the law mostly but anything else as important as that) you tell them this : Allison Macky. Concrete breaks paper. Good luck, my little Jedai. May the Force be with you.

The Ninth King: CQ?

The Ninth King: You changed my name? Do you know how corny it sounds now?

The Ninth King: …CQ..?

Cretin-Queen has signed off.

Minutes passed.

The Ninth King has signed off.


	3. Frustration and Popularity

Noah then entered a period of boredom so profound, for the next year or so he argued about everything and anything. If someone said something the slightest bit incorrect, he jumped at the chance, then felt like beating himself over the head for sounding so much like Nathan. He'd read nearly every textbook (which, let's face it, are rather dry) in his school system and a couple from collage, went so far as to hack into the computers to find out future assignments, if only for something to _do_. When he found that his science/math teacher didn't keep his curriculum on the computer, this intrigued him. It was something he didn't know. And he had a way to find out.

He _could_ pick locks after all.

It was despairingly simple and, after the intense planning he had done, disappointing. A pair of bent wires (in a past life they had been a bobby pin left lying around by Myra, and a pen's little metal clip), a flashlight, an old digital camera, and a good excuse to be around after school. He'd even mapped out several good hiding places in the room and hallway, but it wasn't necessary.

Noah still tried to savor the assignments themselves, but the simplicity left a bad taste in his mouth. His temper got worse than ever, and, with it, his dry sarcasm. The eleven-year-old had for so long been disillusioned from school system's allure (while he had believed in kindergarten—back in the good old days, when the charmed teacher would set aside a little extra time for him and give him books a little harder and a little harder until his entire brain was buzzing—that belief had bowed down to the seething frustration and learned cynicism) that he talked back to teachers, aides, even the principal was not exempt from his sharp tongue. It calmed down a little when eighth grade came along, with new assignments, but it never stopped.

He got a reputation for it. Noah wasn't quite the shortest anymore, neither was he pimply, his eyes weren't set too wide (nor was anything else obviously wrong with his face), and he wasn't what anybody in his grade would call 'fat' or 'string-bean'. The apathy brought on by sheer frustration was mistaken for bravery, earning him high-fives and 'knucks' from the guys. He accepted these gestures with a sort of bemusement, allowing them their petty games. Once again, this was mistaken for the characteristic called 'suave'. The dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed boy was a little less nerdy now, kind-of-almost -halfway …_cool_. Girls started whispering about how he looked cute—for once, it was because he was different, as there weren't that many Indians who lived around there, none of him in his grade or the next or the next, and apparently this made him some sort of 'exotic'.

That was the year he really decided girls would never be understood, no matter how many hours of the day he was stuck with them, school or home.

Frankly, the preteen didn't care too much. He saw his sudden popularity like a plant, in need of the occasional bit of watering, yet he wouldn't be particularly heartbroken if it were to up and die on him. He paid a half-moment's attention to what he put on in the morning, let his hair grow out a little shaggier, and switched the 'charm' of his medical alert bracelet onto a little-looser-than-choker leather string, usually hidden behind his shirt collar. It was easy enough to avoid strawberries, penicillin, and buckwheat at school, and his home was purposely free of all three, the running family joke that 'it's the only reason they notice him, by the absence of strawberry jam'. Other than that, he did as he pleased.

This kind of school life suited him well and, sad to say, inflated his ego. Whose head wouldn't inflate? Classmates and teachers alike in slight awe of him (because now, he wasn't dismissed as just the bookworm, he was acknowledged as the _cool_ smart guy), his parents letting him do his own thing.

Rose has had a job as a store clerk ever since Samuel moved out. Like her youngest, sitting around doing nothing drove the veteran chaos-controller insane. She _needed_ to be busy, in the same way many people find retirement so boring they pick up stupid hobbies. Her money contributed to the various collage funds and their little 'nest egg'. She was happy with a hectic life, not having time to _discuss_ with her husband, which was more than talking about so-and-so's grades, or what he/she was asking for_ now._

While neither really _avoided_ conflict, if they started talking vicious French/Cherokee at (for it was most defiantly not _to_) each other, there wasn't a whole lot of communication going on. Noah, in his ever encompassing efforts to occupy his mind (and every kid's dream of getting one over on his parents), knew a working amount of each; from just plain learning--like a child would learn to speak from its parents naturally--and the interest in just _what_ his parents wanted to say, but didn't. He'd listen to entire foul monologues, poking at a bit of mashed potato while his siblings would chatter on to each other about whatever topic came up. After saying grace, of course.

Charlie's favorite insult seemed to be comparing his wife to various animals, sometimes a scatter-brained bird or an ornery goat/mule. She, on the other hand, seemed much more imaginative on ways to viciously torture her husband with a chosen set of implements (kitchen knives, beauty products, lawnmowers) as she glared at her plate and stabbed whatever needed stabbing and some things that didn't.

But that was the beauty of knowing a language the other didn't, they could scream insults as vulgar as they wanted from the rooftops, and he/she will never know.

Unless someone decides to translate for them. Noah's considered with every passing contempt-filled moment to tell them he _can _understand what they're both saying, then launching into how his mom planned out his dad would die, complete with details that would make the old Indian really look at his wife with wide-eyes (so alien an image he almost couldn't picture it) and emotion Noah couldn't quite predict. Some days, he was so sure it would be shock, or anger, but once or twice he might have seen _hurt_ when he imagined these scenarios. After informing his dad of his eventual doom, he'd turn and spit out all the names Charlie called her and watch as her fury coiled tighter and tighter.

They'd be angry at him too, no doubt. That was their one 'safe place', their native tongue. His parents hadn't purposely taught any of them (Rose told them a few useful phrases, "I don't speak French" among them). There were their middle names, because while they got perfectly biblical first names the same could not be said of words that translated into things like 'little singing bird' or 'snarling wolverine'. See, their parents were all about the compromise. Charlie, whose real name was Akaluga-yona (ah-kaw-lew-gah yoh-nuh), understood very well you don't get through modern life with an Indian name. You had to be quietly proud about it, like how he still wore his hair long enough to tie back in a ponytail. And how all his kids' middle names were of _his_ choice.

Samuel supposedly insisted from age five to eight to be called his Cherokee name, Ayasstege-ahssgaya (ah-yaw-sss-tee-gee ah-sss-gah-yaw), or the warrior man. Dad would crack a smile and lament ever giving him such a prestigious name, and Samuel would even blush a little, barely visible on his dark cheeks. Noah was 'Ahsagee-saquuee' (ah-say-gee saw-kwoo-ee), or in English, strange one. Apparently, when he was first born he had a full head of black hair (it had since faded to a dark brown) that 'stuck up so funny, and the way you just kind of blinked at us…' (As put by Gabe) '…your name was kind of obvious to everybody, even Mom agreed with it. Then you started this habit of sucking on your toes…' No more need be said when Charlie 'Watching Bear' Wilson began to chuckle, an odd rare sound made deep in the throat.

But beyond middle names and the odd phrase, he was on his own. French and Cherokee are vastly different languages; one was easy enough to learn from various library books and listening to the French-speaking population.

The other remained elusive.

There was the odd song moaned under Dad's breath, or a decent site, with audio and everything. But Noah didn't _enjoy_ learning this like he did mathematics, reading, computer code, or even gaming. Language was just memorization to him, in anything other than English, anyways. He knew sufficient French to patch together haphazard conversations with half-way decent grammar (above the fresh Mexican immigrant level, anyways), enough Cherokee for most nouns, pronouns, and verbs to be recognized (sadly just barely above said standard, maybe at the two year mark) and, if he were ever in dire need, get an idea across.

And to eavesdrop.

Logic won over anger in the end. For such a scientific mind as his, he didn't want to be in the vicinity if two secret worlds were to explode simultaneously. Something to be added to the 'after I graduate and can move out of the warzone' list.

For now, though, he occupied as much of his time as he could with eighth-grade homework, hacking the odd person (it was amusing beyond belief when the school prick gets suspended for looking at porn with a school computer), and the new books he'd gotten for his birthday. Technically they were old, but he'd even read the mushiest collection of poetry that had ever been forced upon paper (a mildly-sadistic present from Tina, who knew he wouldn't be able to ignore them or throw them away) or the driest of medical textbooks.

As it was his thirteenth birthday, Samuel saw it was his role to present him with the Playboy 'magazines'. He'd flipped through one for curiosity's sake, wrinkled his nose, closed the beyond dubious scrap of trash, and shuddered. He _did not_ need to see that. Before shattering his brain, he'd merely been planning to toss them in some ditch. Noah had to find a way to destroy them now. So he came up with something to do on a Saturday, rode his bike into town to buy a nice big can of lighter fluid and a box of matches (the clerk looked at him weird), then a half-hour ride into the woods.

Before, the brunette could never understand how someone could be entranced by something as destructive as fire, but… On that day, a pyromaniac was born. He spent the entire day until sunset building the fire bigger and hotter, well aware at this point he might start a wildfire. It was an interesting day, and he ended it with the ceremonial burial of the empty can, in the ashes of the bonfire. Sometimes, even _he_ liked pure nonsense.

Noah promised himself to do it more often.

x~o~x

Hi guys. Hope it doesn't suck. Tell me if it does. Seriously, please. I love your nice reviews, they make me feel like I'm not making a fool of myself. I'm _really_ not sure about this chapter.


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